Between expulsions, deportations, repatriations and arrests: an ethnography of Guarulhos International Airport

• Grant number: 25/12979-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: October 04, 2025
• End date: January 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Natália Corazza Padovani
• Grantee: Lucia Sestokas
• Supervisor: Sarah Turnbull
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Waterloo, Canada
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/09255-3 - Between expulsions; deportations; repatriations and arrests: an ethnography of the Guarulhos International Airport, BP.DR

Abstract

The research takes as reference the daily work of institutional agents at the International Airport of Guarulhos (GRU), to analyze how they operate in processes such as expulsions; deportations; repatriations and arrests of foreign persons. The project takes into account airline employees, outsourced employees and the Federal Police, aiming to examine the relationships established between those who exercise functions in carrying out the removal and arrests of foreigners from/in the national territory. São Paulo is the Brazilian state with the highest movement of foreign people through border posts, with Guarulhos being the city responsible for more than 90% of these movements (Cavalcanti et al, 2020, p.21). The relevance of the city of Guarulhos is due to the presence of the largest international airport in the country. Since 2012, the airport has been managed by the private company association Invepar ACSA. At the same time, the Federal Police is responsible for airport and border policing, which includes executing repatriation, deportation and expulsion measures. It is through the relationship between private companies and state apparatuses aimed at governing displacements across the Guarulhos air border that such compulsory measures occur. Through these same "institutional plots" (Gregori, 2000), there are also practices of arrests resulting both from the so-called "fight against international drug trafficking", and in what refers to the space that became known as "connector", where people who are denied entry into Brazil are kept. For the analyzes envisaged through this ethnography, it is taken into account that the categorizations related to foreigners and the agents that carry out expulsions and arrests are mobilized from articulations of gender, race, class and nationality.